How Common Procedures Became 20 Percent Cheaper for Many Californians

At a time when health care spending seems only to go up, an initiative in California has slashed the prices of many common procedures.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) started paying hospitals differently for 450,000 of its members beginning in 2011. It set a maximum contribution it would make toward what a hospital was paid for knee and hip replacement surgery, colonoscopies, cataract removal surgery and several other elective procedures. Under the new approach, called reference pricing, patients who wished to get a procedure at a higher-priced hospital paid the difference themselves.

A growth-driven and strategic executive, Peter Coffaro commands more than 20 years of progressive management success within the medical device industry. As a District Sales Manager for Stryker Orthopaedics, Peter was responsible for managing and directing a regional sales force to achieve sales and profit goals within the Rocky Mountain region. Previously, he was the Director of Sales & Marketing for Amp Orthopedics. In this role, Peter was responsible for planning, developing, and leading all sales and marketing initiatives. Peter is a former orthopedic distributor in the Pacific Northwest. He has also worked with DePuy Orthopaedics as well as Zimmer, and held positions in sales, sales training, and sales management. Peter has an extensive background in organizational development, business development, sales management, negotiating and P&L management. Peter holds a B.S. degree in Biology from Northern Illinois University.

Related Articles

Mainstay Medical, a company based in Ireland, received European approval and is launching in Germany its ReActiv8 neurostimulator. The device is designed to address chronic lower back pain, but it works rather differently than common […]

If you walked through the sprawling exhibit floor of the San Diego Convention Center last week, you would have noticed products galore. Mannequins being pretend treated on hospital beds, and all kinds of medical devices […]

For decades, the average hospital stay following total joint arthroplasty (TJA) has been getting shorter. The historical standard was several weeks of hospitalization, yet improvements in perioperative care have reduced the average length of stay […]

(Medgadget) – Osso VR is an award winning VR surgical and medical device training platform. The company is made up of practicing clinicians, professional VR developers and medtech industry veterans. […]

FOLLOW ON TWITTER

FOLLOW ON INSTAGRAM

FOLLOW ON GOOGLE+

(MassDevice) – A federal appeals court yesterday split up a sales rep poaching dispute between Stryker and DePuy Orthopaedics, sending some claims to a California district court and others to the federal court in New Jersey. […]

MassDevice – Stryker this week argued that the lawsuit it leveled against Zimmer Biomet this spring, accusing its orthopedics rival of poaching sales reps, doesn’t need to include the former reps. […]

About

OrthoFeed is a blog about orthopedics and emerging medical technologies. The blog posts cover a wide range of digital health topics including: 3-D Printing, Robotics, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence. The website is updated daily to help our viewers stay on top of industry trends. The OrthoFeed motto is “We curate, you discover!”